internet of things

151 Articles

Unhacked Mattress Phones Home

February 24, 2025 by 30 Comments

[Dylan] has a fancy bed that can be set to any temperature. Apparently this set him back about $2,000, it only works if it has Internet, and the bed wants $19 a month for anything beyond basic features. Unsurprisingly, [Dylan] decided to try to hack the mattress firmware and share what he learned with us.

Oddly enough, it was easy to just ask the update URL for the firmware and download it. Inside, it turned out there was a mechanism for “eng@eightsleep.com” to remotely SSH into any bed and — well — do just about anything. You may wonder why anyone wants to gain control of your bed. But if you are on the network, this could be a perfect place to launch an attack on the network and beyond.

Of course, they can also figure out when you sleep, if you sleep alone or not, and, of course, when no one is in the bed. But if those things bother you, maybe don’t get an Internet-connected bed.

Oddly enough, the last time we saw a bed hack, it was from [Dillan], not [Dylan]. Just because you don’t want Big Sleep to know when you are in bed doesn’t mean it isn’t useful for your private purposes.

Reverse Engineering A Soundsystem’s API

July 31, 2024 by 12 Comments

We’ve all been stymied by a smart thermostat, coffee maker, or other device which would work fine on its own but ultimately seems to be worse off for having an Internet connection —  so when something actually pulls off this feat it’s quite noteworthy. [James] has a powerful set of connected speakers and while they don’t have all of the functionality he needed built-in, an included web API at least allowed him to build in the features he wanted.

The major problem with these speakers isn’t that they’re incredibly loud (although they are), but rather that the wide range of available volumes for such a loud soundsystem doesn’t leave a lot of fine adjustment in the range where [James] typically uses these speakers. To tackle the problem, he first found the web interface the speakers present and then discovered a somewhat hidden application programming interface (API) within that allows for some manual control. He built a second website which serves as a volume slider within the range he wants, and the web server sends this volume to the speakers via this API which allows much finer control than the built-in user interface.

Having a usable API included with Internet-connected devices is not always the case, although it’s a great model for any company wanting to allow their customers better control of the products they buy. If you need to roll out your own API for connected devices that don’t have one already, take a look at [Sean Boyce]’s guide from 2019.

Screenshot of eBay listings with Gigaset IoT devices being sold, now basically useless

A Giga-Sunset For Gigaset IoT Devices

April 3, 2024 by 76 Comments

In today’s “predictable things that happened before and definitely will happen again”, we have another company in the “smart device” business that has just shuttered their servers, leaving devices completely inert. This time, it’s Gigaset. The servers were shuttered on the 29th of March, and the official announcement (German, Google Translate) states that there’s no easy way out.

It appears that the devices were locked into Gigaset Cloud to perform their function, with no local-only option. This leaves all open source integrations in the dust, whatever documentation there was, is now taken down. As the announcement states, Gigaset Communications Gmbh has gotten acquired due to insolvency, and the buyer was not remotely interested in the Smart Home portion of the business. As the corporate traditions follow, we can’t expect open sourcing of the code or protocol specification or anything of the sort — the devices are bricks until someone takes care of them.

If you’re looking for smart devices on the cheap, you might want to add “Gigaset” to your monitored search term list — we’ll be waiting for your hack submissions as usual. After all, we’ve seen some success stories when it comes to abandoned smart home devices – like the recent Insteon story, where a group of device owners bought out and restarted the service after the company got abruptly shut down.

We thank [Louis] for sharing this with us!

Another Chance To Revive Your Nabaztag

January 23, 2024 by 17 Comments

The early history of home internet appliances was replete with wonderful curios as a new industry sought to both find a function for itself and deliver something useful with whatever semiconductors were available nearly two decades ago. A favourite of ours is the Nabaztag, a French-designed information appliance in the form of a cute plastic rabbit whose ears would light up and move around as it delivered snippets of information.

The entity behind the Nabaztag folded and the servers went away years ago of course, but the original designer [Olivier Mével] never gave up on his creation. Back in 2019 he created an updated mainboard for the device packing a Raspberry Pi Zero W, which has been released in a series of crowdfunding campaigns. If you have a Nabaztag and haven’t yet upgraded, you can snag one now as the latest campaign has started.

We took a look at the Nabaztag back in 2020, at the time with out bricked original unit. Happily a year later we were able to snag one of the upgrades, so it’s now happily keeping us up to date with the time, weather, and other fun things. The upgrade motherboard is designed to slot into the same place as the original and mate with all its connectors, and even comes with that annoying triangle screwdriver. If you want to stand out against all the Alexa and Google Home owners, dig out your cute rabbit from the 2000s and give it this board!

Toy Gaming Controller Makes The Big Leagues

November 1, 2023 by 5 Comments

Some of the off-brand video game consoles and even accessories for the major brands can leave a lot to be desired. Whether it’s poor build quality or a general lack of support or updates, there are quite a few things on the market not worth anyone’s time or money. [Jonathan] was recently handed just such a peripheral, a toy game controller originally meant for a small child, but upon further inspection it turned into a surprisingly hackable platform, capable of plenty of IoT-type tasks.

The controller itself was easily disassembled, and the functional buttons within were wired to a Wemos D1 Mini instead of the originally-planned ESP32 because of some wiring irregularities and the fact that the Wemos D1 Mini having the required amount of I/O. It’s still small enough to be sealed back inside the controller as well, powered by the batteries that would have powered the original controller.

For the software, [Jonathan] is using MQTT to register button presses with everything easily accessible over Wi-Fi, also making it possible to update the software wirelessly. He was able to use it to do a few things as proof-of-concept, including playing a game in PyGame and controlling a Sonos speaker, but for now he’s using it to control an LED sculpture. With something this easily modified, though, it would be pretty straightforward to use it instead for a home automation remote control, especially since it is already set up to use MQTT.

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Your Guide To Using Amazon’s Sidewalk Network For The Internet Of Things

May 1, 2023 by 61 Comments

As the Internet of Things became a mainstream reality, it raised an interesting point about connectivity. We quickly learned it wasn’t ideal to have every light bulb, toaster, and kettle buzzing away on our main WiFi networks. Nor was it practical to sign up for a cellular data plan for every tracker tag or remote sensor we wanted to use.

To solve this issue, various tech companies have developed their own low-power mesh networking solutions. Amazon’s Sidewalk network is one of the widest spread in the US. Now, it’s opening it up for wider use beyond its own products, and you can get in on the action.

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Supercon 2022: Irak Mayer Builds Self-Sustainable Outdoor IoT Devices

March 13, 2023 by 4 Comments

[Irak Mayer] has been exploring IoT applications for use with remote monitoring of irrigation control systems. As you would expect, the biggest challenges for moving data from the middle of a field to the home or office are with connectivity and power. Obviously, the further away from urbanization you get, the sparser both these aspects become, and the greater the challenge.

[Irak] solves his connectivity problem by assuming there is some WiFi network within range, building a system around the Blues Wireless WiFi note card. Substituting their cellular card would be an option for applications out of WiFi range, but presumably without changing too much on the system and software side of things. Leveraging the Adafruit FeatherWing INA219, which is a bidirectional current sensor with an I2C interface, for both the power generation and system consumption measurements. For control, [Irak] is using an Adafruit ESP32 board, but says little more about the hardware. On the software side, [Irak] is using the Blues Wireless NoteHub for the initial connection, which then routes the collected data onto the Adafruit IoT platform for collation purposes. The final part of the hardware is a LiPo battery which is on standby to soak up any excess power available from the energy harvesting. This is monitored by an LC709203f battery fuel gauge.

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